Questions from a lost soul

I, like certain human beings on this planet, am plagued with a question that seems to show up in every aspect of my life..

WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?

What is the point of my existence? Why am I here? Why now? What problem am I here to solve? Or am I simply here to inspire those that will change the world? Am I a forerunner? (One who is here to prepare the way for another) Or am I the change that needed a forerunner?

I like to believe that life on this planet isn’t random. It’s strategic. Someone, somewhere is orchestrating things, arranging various pieces in order to paint the desired picture. Their desired picture. And I am but a stroke of paint that adds to the beauty of the artist’s masterpiece. A screw that holds several pieces together or a piece being held together by a screw. I could be a brick, a hinge, a door, an exhaust pipe, a window, a ceiling or a piece of a roof, but all in all I believe I am needed inorder to beautify the structure, painting or project 

Or am I wrong?

Is life really just a sporadic event/ Could life just be a sporadic event? A combination of random variables that just happened to result in the creation of life on a planet. Is my life just random? Did I just happen to be born here and now? Am I just randomly this height? Randomly this size? Randomly this good looking? 

And if life is random, does what I do matter? If I decided to become an artist or a journalist does it affect anyone? Do my daily actions change anything? Is there a point?

You could argue that it’s not that black and white. That although I am a random occurrence in the midst of other random occurrences, my actions still mean something. That what I desire to do with myself does indeed affect something, it affects someone. You could claim that I have the potential to move mountains, to create change, to shift the Earth.

You could also argue that it is black and white. That my actions, although seemingly important, means little in the grand scheme of things. That even the changes I could potentially produce mean nothing because there’s no guarantee that I live to enjoy it. And when I’m gone there is no guarantee that the change will live past me.

You could bring up the countless number of people who did make a change, and then talk about how some never got to enjoy the outcome. About how some were persecuted for even attempting to change. About how some were labeled as mad individuals because of the change they sought. 

Or you could switch perspectives and talk about how some individuals thought they made a change, but it was nothing more than a simple ripple that corrected itself once they were gone.

To pull your argument together you could then talk about those who lived their lives mundanely, never sought to change anything, never sought to be or do anything but survive, and then they die. They remain just like the ones who did try to change, dead. They’re all dead. Then you could close your argument with the question… “WHAT’S THE POINT?”

And I think that question is right. What is the point? If life is truly random then two things remain certain. I was born and I will die. What happens in between could matter, but does it really? If I decided to live to my fullest potential, to accomplish what I could, to break down the barriers that were set by the people before me, to climb higher on a ladder whose construction began before my inception, does that matter? And alternatively if I decided to enjoy myself, to live in the manner of one who seeks nothing but the fulfillment of all possible desires, to cast all thoughts of the future to the wind and simply enjoy my here and now, to deny myself of nothing that I desire, does that matter?

Truly, what is the point? If all life is random then when I die that’s it. I remain as dead as those who made a change and as dead as those who didn’t. Nothing. No conversation, revelation, congratulations, appreciation, not even a thought would reach me. The show that is my life would have ended. 

So forgive me if I choose to believe that there is a creator, an orchestrator of all things, because that means there’s a reason for me. And if I can grasp that reason, understand it and live by it, then when my time is up, I can leave knowing that I made the artist’s work one stroke more beautiful.

Written by: Akinwale Akintobi